Morocco Faces Staggering Unemployment: 80% of Women, 77% of Youth Out of Work

In Morocco, 80.2% of women of working age, including 81.7% in urban areas and 77.2% in rural areas, are unemployed. They make up nearly three-quarters of the inactive (73.1%), of which 68.8% in urban areas, and more than half of them (51.1%) have no diploma and 44.9% are between 15 and 34 years old, according to a bulletin on the main characteristics of the active and employed population.

As for young people, estimated at 5.9 million and aged 15 to 24, 4.6 million (77.2%) are unemployed, 905,000 (15.4%) have a job, and 439,000 (7.4%) are looking for a job. Three-quarters of unemployed young people (77%) are students and 19.6% are housewives. More than one in four young people in Morocco, or 1.5 million (25.2%), do not work, study or undergo training, the report by the High Commission for Planning (HCP) notes. Among them, there are nearly 72.8% of women, of whom 40.6% are married and 68.2% have a diploma.

The unemployment rate is 32.7% among young people of all ages (15-24 years), compared to 13.2% among adults aged 15 to 44, and 3.3% among adults aged 45 and over. It is 61.4% among young people with higher education degrees. In Morocco, young people suffer from persistently high unemployment, with a low activity rate of 22.8% in 2022.